


you can't escape the bitter end

by FeatheredShadow



Category: The Tudors (TV)
Genre: Drama, Gen, Ghosts, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-04 20:56:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13372911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeatheredShadow/pseuds/FeatheredShadow
Summary: “What are you doing here?”There was a long moment of silence, so stretched out he started to wonder whether or not he was going to get an answer before she spoke, her voice kinder than it had ever been in his presence.“I wouldn’t have thought you to be the kind of man with a guilty conscience, Your Grace, but here you are. And here I am, too.”





	you can't escape the bitter end

**Author's Note:**

> [ _companion gifset_ ](http://darknesshadows.tumblr.com/post/169702744324/what-are-you-doing-here-there-was-a-long-moment)

“What are you doing here?”

There was a long moment of silence, so stretched out he started to wonder whether or not he was going to get an answer before she spoke, her voice kinder than it had ever been in his presence.

“I wouldn’t have thought you to be the kind of man with a guilty conscience, Your Grace, but here you are. And here I am, too.”

Charles hesitated for a moment, considering finishing his ale and leaving the table – he could still hear his men talking in the room, although none of them was close enough to hear him talk to no one in particular.

It wouldn’t do good for him to have people thinking he could hear _voices_ – not when they were in the middle of crushing a rebellion that edged on full revolt against the King.

“You haven’t answered my question, Madam,” he finally pointed out, settling for drinking another gulp, eyes fixed on the slender frame in front of him.

Her dress was similar to the one she had been wearing on the day of her death – of her execution – but darker and richer.

Fitting for a Queen of England in mourning, in any case.

She didn’t seem amused at his question.

“I had wanted to see _him_ ,” she explained simply, moving to see in front of him.

The chair didn’t budge an inch as she settled, the light of the fire behind them reflected in her jewelry.

“But he is indifferent to the souls of the dead circling around him.” There was a dispassionate tone to her voice, but he knew her well enough by now to know there was barely conceded anger behind it. “As it appears, I am not the only one who has been trying to reach out to him, but… he is blind and deaf to our pleas.”

She tilted her head to the side, an emotion flickering on her face.

He remembered the young girl he had danced with, so many years ago. So lively and spirited, she had been – and with eyes only for Henry, as it ought to be expected. But she had always been ready to engage in a bout of flirting, and the Lord knew he had indulged in it far more than it would have been wise, had he known what the future had in store for all of them.

“ _You_ , on the other hand… Have you ever dreamed of your late wife, Your Grace?”

“I have, yes,” Charles answered truthfully.

He had woken up from some of these dreams to a pillow wet with tears, on a couple of occasions, or with his nightclothes drenched in cold sweat and an uneasy feeling in his gut. The dreams had abated over the years, but they had come back more fiercely since a couple of weeks – months, if he was honest with himself – and he had an inkling to what had caused it.

Anne Boleyn nodded thoughtfully, her dark eyes still focused on him, a pensive expression on her face. She was pale – although maybe not as pale as that bloody day of May – but there was a serene air around her that made it clear she wasn’t part of this realm anymore.

“Margaret never liked you much,” he added, spite absent from his tone.

The apparition blinked slowly, unnerving him.

“I know. And I suppose I understand why she was so distrustful, now…”

A sad smile graced her lips.

“The throne is cruel to women who weren’t born for it,” she added softly, in a voice so low he had to strain to hear her. “ _He_ warned me about it, but I didn’t listen…”

Charles frowned.

“Who warned you about it?”

“King Francis,” she answered simply. “It was probably one of the best warnings I got, but… I couldn’t listen to it, in those days. I was on the edge of a golden world, after all.”

There was a melancholic tone to her voice now and Charles stayed silent, eyes fixed on her. He hadn’t expected her to be haunting him – not when he could still hear the screams of the women, when their rebellious husbands had been hung, or the empty look on children’s eyes, once his men had been through with the orders given to them.

Still, she was here, and he had to listen to her piece, if he wanted her to leave him in peace.

“You never thought me fit for the throne either,” she added after a time, focusing her attention on him again.

“I did not,” Charles answered calmly, the apparition in front of him merging with his memories of a decade ago – so long, already… “There is more to the throne than a good education and lively spirits, Madam. Royal blood has its importance.”

He winced a little at his words and she looked at him with a blank expression before smirking a little – the gesture familiar enough to make him relax.

“That is true,” she said slowly. “He wouldn’t have sent Katherine to the scaffold like he did to me…”

“He sent her in exile for years and forbade her to see her daughter, until the bitter end,” Charles pointed out, remembering the look in the Queen’s eyes when he had come to tell her of Henry’s marriage with his new queen.

Who was now sitting in front of him, a ghostly presence whose silence made dread creep up his spine.

“And yet you are the one who feels guilty for all of it,” she slowly pointed out, a strange expression on her face. “I hadn’t expected that of you, Your Grace.”

“I’m not heartless, Madam,” Charles answered briskly, reaching for his ale and finding it gone, much to his dismay. “Two of my nieces are now motherless, and there’s nothing anyone in the kingdom can do about it.”

He paused for a moment.

“Many had thought, and I include myself with them, that with your death and the King’s new marriage, all would have been well once again.”

He laughed, a bitter, empty sound that almost turned into a sob.

“Well, we were mistaken. A third queen, no heir, and the kingdom is on the verge of a civil war.”

“Don’t you wish you could go back in time?” Anne Boleyn asked him with curiosity, her ethereal body leaning towards him. “Change something? One thing?”

Charles hesitated for a moment.

“There are numerous events that could be changed,” he finally answered in a cautious tone. “But who am I to say it would make everything better? Maybe it would make matters worse, in the end. Maybe _there would be_ a civil war right now.”

“Such dark thoughts, Your Grace,” she whispered, and he felt a shiver down his spine.

Conversations were dying out behind him and but the fires were still restocked. Despite the warmth of the room, he felt cold suddenly – and wondered if it was the near embrace of death he was feeling.

If he could almost touch it.

“You would have been happier if you hadn’t married the King,” he finally said, in such a low tone he wasn’t sure she could hear him.

But she was _dead_ , and she could see his guilty conscience from all the way to – probably Heaven, if she had seen Margaret, if she looked so peaceful and serene now that she wasn’t in this realm anymore.

“You would have been happier, and alive,” he said a little louder when she didn’t react to his words, still looking at him with this undecipherable expression on her face.

She smiled a little at that.

“I might have been,” she answered truthfully. “Or, if I had given the King a son…”

“If he had lived longer than a couple of weeks,” Charles mumbled, remembering the little prince Henry – and how devastated his parents had been when he had died.

Henry – _his_ Henry – had seen it as a bad omen and Charles wondered if it had been the case, in the end.

His words seem to have been enough to quiet the ghost for some time, until she spoke up again, the fire behind them reflecting onto her jewels.

“Then, pray tell me, Your Grace, what if, if no prince from me?” she asked in a low voice, a serious expression on her face.

He was suddenly struck by the liveness of her skin – and how it different it was from the last few times he had seen her. First, it had been during that forsaken stroll in the gardens, when Henry had told him that he had been _pushed_ into putting More to death – as if he hadn’t had his mind set already – and then again when he had come to conduct _her_ to the Tower.

There had been the same haunted look on her face, a trapped look, knowing that there was no escape from what was closing around her.

He had never expected her to be executed – for Henry to want to kill his wife when he had ripped his country in two to marry her in the first place.

“A happy, quieter marriage into some member of the nobility,” he said with a decided tone, reaching for another cup of ale.

It tasted sour and bitter but it would have to do.

There was something unpleasant in the smile on her face.

“Pray tell, to whom then?” she asked in a mocking tone, the smirk back on her face.

Charles shrugged.

“I’m sure there would have been plenty of suitors for you,” he said absently, his thoughts drifting to the blood – the blood of innocents – that was barely dried on his armor. “You were…” and he gestured in her direction, past caring if someone could see or hear him, “ _you_ , after all. Spirited and lively and seductive.”

Her smirk turned into something different at his words and she studied him again.

“You are considering the hypothesis for yourself,” she said after a moment, before a laugh escaped her. “Oh, this is hilarious! After all these years spent hating me… you’re considering having taken me into your bed and to your house before _he_ did.”

“I wouldn’t have had you dead for not giving me a son,” Charles said quietly, her laugh abruptly stopping. “And you wouldn’t have been Queen of England, but… my wife is quite happy of her position, now.”

“I’m sure she is,” Anne Boleyn said quietly, her eyes burning into his soul. “And maybe I would have been happier with you, that is true… but it would have required another meeting, would it not?”

There had been the pageant and the dance, Charles remembered them quite well – how he had enjoyed dancing with the new beauty at court, and how he had entertained the idea of getting to know her better, afterwards, but… there had been Margaret to bring to Portugal, and her marriage, and then their marriage, and when he had finally come back to court, Anne Boleyn was firmly the mistress of the King – at least in name, if not in _something else_.

“You arrived to court with your eyes set on him already,” he pointed out.

Drinking his ale didn’t stop him from noticing how she flinched at his words, an expression he couldn’t decipher flickering on her face before all mockery disappeared, leaving only thoughtfulness and melancholia.

“I wish I hadn’t come to court and stayed in France instead,” she said quietly, almost more to herself than to him. “It might have been better, there.”

“It might,” Charles agreed, sipping his ale as she stayed silent for a long time, mulling something over before speaking up again.

“I’ll leave you to your guilt, then,” she finally said in a low voice, as they were almost the only people left in the room. “For all this talk of me not knowing the price of the throne… you are still conducting the orders of the crown, Your Grace, no matter how much you disagree with them.”

Charles frowned, rising up from his seat, but she was already gone in a swirl of satin and he sat down loudly, some of his ale falling onto the table.

He needed not to have another ghost troubling his nights – another name to the long list of litanies that were already haunting him in his sleep – but it seemed it was already too late for that.

“God bless the Queen,” he mumbled before gulping down the rest of his ale and slowly rising up again, this time careful not to jolt the table.

He could almost hear a laugh in the night.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is always more than welcome :-)


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